John Fogarty: 'We need to develop our own indigenous props'

John Fogarty has a job to do on this Emerging Ireland tour.

If Ireland are to break through their World Cup barrier in the next four or eight years, the last 12 months have shown that they will need a scrum to compete with the best, and specifically South Africa.

While Ireland have won two of their three games against the back-to-back champion Springboks over the last year, those three meetings highlighted just how superior the South African scrum is compared to the rest in the world.

The World Cup quarter-final defeat to New Zealand also saw Ireland's set-piece whistled off the park by Wayne Barnes, and although the Irish set-up are still unhappy with the referee’s interpretations that evening, a cuter set of forwards would have read the wind and adapted.

Aside from Rob Herring and Dave Heffernan, the age profile of Ireland’s first-choice hookers Dan Sheehan and Rónan Kelleher is reassuring, while Munster’s Diarmuid Barron and Ulster’s Tom Stewart appear to be next cabs off the rank and have been exposed to senior Irish camps.

At prop, the future is less clear. At tighthead, Tadhg Furlong and Finlay Bealham hold the matchday jerseys, but with the pair turning 32 and 33 respectively in the next two months, further options are needed.

Oli Jager should be hitting the prime of his career at 29, and is likely to remain involved in the Irish squad this autumn, but there still appears to be a reluctance to trust Ulster’s Tom O’Toole in big Test matches.

The reliance on Andrew Porter to play upwards of 70 minutes each game at loosehead shows where Ireland are at that position, as does the fact that Cian Healy is still fending off the challengers to the 17 shirt, ahead of his 37th birthday in a fortnight.

It was notable that in the days